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Description

As a manufacturer, you see opportunity abounds and know you must invest, but your leadership team is risk averse given market conditions. So you must pick your limited investment options wisely. Where are the “best wins” out there for new operating models, aggressive hiring, smart partnerships, and targeted investments to realize productivity gains?

Join us September 7 to stay on the path toward profitability and productivity. Get insights from practical strategists at PwC who will discuss essential actions and investments for helping industrial manufacturing companies like yours succeed.

The Challenges Industrial Manufacturers Face

You inhabit a world littered with uneasiness. Global demand for manufactured products is growing at a snail’s pace. Output is expected to increase just 3.4% in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund. Growth is dampened by Brexit concerns and political uncertainties. Foreign trade is at historically low levels, and, although oil prices have recovered a bit recently, they are not rising enough to undo the collapse in drilling and concomitant retraction in the rest of the energy supply chain.

More problems could be in the offing. New nationalist governments around the world, including the United States, are threatening to further undermine the free flow of goods, creating more uncertainty and constraints upon manufacturing growth. The ripple effects of any attempts to reset trade agreements would be felt in the industrial manufacturing sector; manufacturers with plants in Mexico and China could see their business models decline quickly under the weight of increased import duties and tariffs.

The Fork in the Road

Many will take a wait-and-see approach, delaying capital expenditure investments until more clarity on actual policies emerges. However, world-class industrial manufacturers will become more aggressive and deliberate in their investments in these challenging times to capitalize on the opportunities and leapfrog their competition. Which will you choose – to hope to survive or to take charge and thrive?

The Path Forward to Profit

To realize productivity gains and profit, industrial manufacturers must invest today with these goals in mind:

Be able to manage a superabundance of new data generated by automation and the IIoT so that it becomes truly useful and not merely overwhelming;

Adapt technology to run their supply chains and operations more seamlessly;

Monetize digitization;

Find talent adept at industrial software programming and analytics; and

Build strategic partnerships that won’t compete for market share.

Join PwC strategists as they discuss these six goals and the key actions and investments industrial manufacturers must take now to achieve them and put the manufacturers solidly on the path toward profitability and productively.

Robert (Bobby) Bono, Industrial Manufacturing Leader, PwC

Bobby is the leader of the PwC United States Industrial Manufacturing Practice. In this role, he helps public companies navigate industry challenges and opportunities. Bobby contributes to many thought leadership pieces, publications, news articles and blogs on issues currently facing industrial manufacturing companies. He is frequently interviewed by the media on his experience and point of view. Bobby's approach is hands-on and balanced. He resolves business issues with his clients in a proactive, practical and collaborative manner. He is confident in his interactions, thoughtful in his decision making and takes responsibility for his actions.

On Demand Sessions

Findings from the 2016 PwC Data and Analytics Survey, in collaboration with Forbes, were released at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions in Davos. More than 2,100 executives shared their next Big Decisions and how decision-making needs to improve by 2020.

With insights from across 15 industries, including a large majority of executives from the Industrials Sector, the survey suggests:

There are several Big Decisions facing executives; the top three are:1) Launching new products and services (31%); 2) Entering new markets (17%); 3) Investing in IT (15%).

Highly data-driven companies are ready to compete. Companies are looking to grow in new markets and a large percentage (48%) describe themselves as data-driven.

Executives have ambition to improve decision turn-time and sophistication. Executives want decision-making to be faster, especially in banking, insurance and healthcare. They also acknowledge there is even more work to be done to improve the sophistication of these decisions.

Companies are beginning to understand the power of forward-looking predictive and prescriptive analytics. However there are still a surprisingly low number of organizations that have predictive analytics available to leverage, with only 29% of decision-makers stating they have these capabilities.

A significant role for machines is emerging. We’re at an inflection point where artificial intelligence can help business make better and faster decisions. It requires an open mind- and a willingness to collaborate—to take advantage of it.

Join PwC Leaders as they discuss these findings and what companies need to do to be faster and more sophisticated when it comes to decision-making, while seeking the right mix of mind and machine to leverage data, understand risk, and gain a competitive edge.

Originally aired February 23, 2017: Industry 4.0: Building the Digital Enterprise

PwC’s 2016 Global Industry 4.0 Survey is the biggest worldwide survey of its kind, with over 2,000 participants from nine major industrial sectors and 26 countries. The study explores the benefits of digitizing your company’s horizontal and vertical value chain, as well as building your digital product & service portfolio.

Join PwC Partners as they discuss Industry 4.0 and the effects to the Industrial Manufacturing Sector.

Behind the scenes of the world’s leading industrial products companies, a profound digital transformation is now underway. The industrial manufacturing sector is no exception. Companies are digitizing essential functions within their internal vertical value chain, as well as with their horizontal partners along the supply chain. In addition, they are enhancing their product portfolio with digital functionalities and introducing innovative, data-based services.

Industrial manufacturing companies plan to invest 5% of annual revenue in digital operations solutions over the next five years. And they are setting themselves ambitious targets for the level of digitization and integration that can be achieved.

Many companies are already producing machines to deliver on the vision of the connected factory, using the power of the internet to link machines, sensors, computers, and humans in order to enable new levels of information monitoring, collection, processing, and analysis. This is adding to the products and services that companies can offer their customers, helping them work in collaborative ways in the design of future machines and their digital environment to boost performance.

A number of technologies, including robotics, cobotics, 3D printing and nanotechnology, have direct relevance for many industrial manufacturing applications while other technologies, such as augmented reality, can enable manufacturers give customers real-time information and training at the point of use.

Some of these developments are maturing now. Others remain for the future. The rate of adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies by industrial manufacturing companies is accelerating fast. The digitization, integration and automation opportunities offered enable companies to collaborate both internally and across their value chains in ways that can provide a step change in productivity as well as design and build quality. And they are opportunities that are increasingly important as companies seek to stay relevant as the era of digitally-connected smart infrastructure develops.

What's on the minds of top manufacturing CEOs from around the world? PwC's longest running Global CEO Survey gains valuable insight into today's business challenges as well as the trends and issues shaping decision-making for tomorrow. Now in its 20th year, we explore what CEOs are concerned about in the future as well as, revisiting past CEO survey respondents on how their views may or may not have changed.

Key findings include:

Manufacturing CEO’s continued confidence in growth with 41% of CEO’s feeling confident for revenue growth over the next 3 years. This compared to only 33% of CEO’s feeling confident from our first survey in 1997.

Manufacturing CEOs agree with the global average in prioritizing innovation (29%) and human capital (18%) as the two areas they most want to strengthen in order to capitalize on new opportunities.

As our interactions become ever more automated, data driven and virtual, the human factor is receding. Industrial Manufacturing CEOs are aware of the risks and relatively confident in their systems and safeguards against damage to stakeholder trust levels.

In Industrial Manufacturing, 55% of CEOs agree or agree strongly that it is becoming harder to balance competing in an open, global marketplace with trends toward more closed national policies.

On Demand Presenters

At Strategy&/PwC Italy, Massimo Pellegrino is a Partner and the Digital Strategy and Innovation Practice leader. He’s also the global Data & Analytics lead for the Industrial Products sector. Massimo holds a Degree in Political Sciences as well as a Master of Business Administration.

Pellegrino joined PwC in September 2012 from Hewlett-Packard where he was the WW Vice President - Strategy and Portfolio Lifecycle Management - Strategic Enterprise Services, the organization within HP in charge of portfolio strategy and execution for Cloud, Mobility, Security and Information Management Services.

Originally aired February 23: Industry 4.0: Building the Digital Enterprise

Stefan Schrauf Partner Strategy&

Stefan Schrauf is a partner in operations strategy for Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business and the Germany Industry 4.0 leader. He has more than 10 years of cross-industry experience in supply-chain management, sourcing, and product development. He focuses on helping clients develop and implement strategic changes in core operations.

His experience includes supply-chain strategy and transformation and operating model design in engineered equipment, product and aftermarket businesses.

Kimmy Donald is a Senior Manager in Assurance practice. She has over nine years of experience leading large multinational public and private clients within the Industrial Manufacturing sector. She focuses on advising clients in areas such as SEC Reporting, managing multinational engagements, mergers and acquisitions and other technical accounting matters. Additionally, She provides perspectives and insights into sector thought leadership and business development initiatives.

Technical details

This webinar will be conducted using a slides-and-audio format. After you complete your registration, you will receive a confirmation email with details for joining the webinar.